Chavez Preparing Venezuela Return, Bolivia’s Morales Says

By Charlie Devereux and Nathan Crooks -
Jan 22, 2013

Bolivian President Evo Morales said
cancer-stricken President Hugo Chavez is preparing to return
home, a day after Venezuela’s foreign minister said the self-
declared socialist joked and laughed during a meeting at his
hospital bedside in Havana.

“Yesterday I was in communication with Cuba and I have
good news that our brother comandante President Chavez is
already in physiotherapy in order to return to his country,”
Morales said during a speech in Bolivia’s congress broadcast on
Telesur. “We hope to be alongside him at international events
as we have always been.”

The 58-year-old leader missed his Jan. 10 inauguration and
hasn’t been seen in public since stepping off an airplane in
Cuba on Dec. 10 for surgery to treat an undisclosed cancer.
Morales’s comments are the latest indication that Chavez’s
health is improving since Vice President Nicolas Maduro said on
Jan. 20 that the former paratrooper will soon enter a new stage
in his recovery.

Elias Jaua, who was appointed foreign minister last week,
said in a posting on his Twitter account yesterday that he met
with Chavez at the CIMEQ hospital in Cuba and received
instructions from the president ahead of the Community of Latin
American and Caribbean States summit that will be held in
Santiago, Chile this week.

No date has been set for Chavez to return to Caracas as he
continues to face a “tough, complex health battle,”
Information Minister Ernesto Villegas said today on state
television.

Best Case

Argenis Chavez, the president’s brother, also said Chavez
would return to Venezuela shortly yesterday, according to a
report by the Associated Press, which he later denied.

The constitution states that elections must be held within
30 days should Chavez step down or die. Before departing for
Havana, Chavez urged his followers to vote for Maduro should he
be unable to continue at the helm of South America’s largest oil
producer.

The best scenario for Venezuela’s government would be for
Chavez to come back to Caracas, be sworn in for his new term and
then resign, Barclays Plc said today in an e-mailed report.

“Besides Maduro enjoying the advantage of being the
incumbent, this would lead to a presidential election in the
very short term, affording him the sympathy effect created by
Chavez’s health problems, and would still find the opposition in
a weak position after the two defeats they suffered last year,”
Barclays analysts Alejandro Arreaza and Alejandro Grisanti wrote
in the note.

‘Prudent Time’

Chavez has permission to be away for a “prudent time
period,” Supreme Court President Luisa Estella Morales said
yesterday, without specifying a limit beyond which the court
would consider new measures. The idea that Chavez could take the
oath from Cuba “was never on the table,” nor has the court
contemplated sending a panel of doctors to evaluate his health,
Morales said during an interview on state television.

“It would make no sense to invade in a disrespectful
manner the head of state’s privacy by sending a medical board,”
Morales said.